Template talk:Sidebar starship
I created this sidebar to test its usefulness. I think it is a good idea to have such templates in cases that standardized information is to be displayed - better than a "manual template" in form of a wikitable in many cases. See the sourcecode of this page for the way this template is implemented - it's a very clean way, I think. Any comments? Another thing that obviously needs to be discussed (for any sidebar-template that gets implemented) is what information exactly gets included. In this case, I don't think there's much more information that is available for most Federation starships... -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) :How many ships do we know when were "Launched"? I don't think enough (maybe one or two dozen out of 200+) to account for having that row added-- and I'm not sure having excessive "unknowns" in the rows (as there would be with having a "Launched" row) would not look all that aesthetically pleasing. --Alan del Beccio 12:32, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) Beat me to it, Alan... :) As stated above, everything is just a test at the moment. You're right, we should probably remove that line. Any other line to add? -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) :I'm not opposed to having the launch date, where applicable, so maybe adding it to those ships (NX-01, Voyager, Defiant, etc) only. Say like with maybe an alternate template for those ships, or just do it manually? --Alan del Beccio 14:18, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) ::Is this really necessary? I mean, I have the feeling that it will make Memory Alpha look like the fact files where everything was put into a small info box. Next we will have those for the people though there might be no more information than species, sex, name and actor; I think they are just for lazy people who don't want to read the text -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 16:35, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) :I can go either way on this. I don't think it is necesssary in terms that Kobi outlined, but in some cases I think it is necessary, such as starship class specifications-- info that really doesnt appropriately fit into the main text. -Alan del Beccio 20:26, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) :::I think we should use the sidebar for all starships (with this form), but do we need a template for this? The German MA uses it just by copyediting the code into new articles, I think that's simple enough. Btw: we have a template for the episode sidebar for months, but nobody seems to care about it, so I doubt that there is anybody who will implement this. --Memory 21:29, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC) Re:Alan: I think we should just use one template and include the information that is available for most articles. Creating more than one template with different info fields would defeat the purpose of having a template (which is, IMO, enforcing a moderate standardization). Re:Kobi: It's not as if the sidebars are a new feature. Nearly every starship article (and of course other types) already has a sidebar, it's just that those sidebars don't have any standardization regarding the selection of info fields and their order. Converting all existing sidebars into this template would create a standard "look&feel" (which isn't a bad idea for the most basic facts) and at the same time avoid having "all" information in a sidebar instead of in the text. Re:Memory: On the other hand, is there any good reason not to use a template, if using the template means standard content, standard formatting and easier editing? About the episode template: I think there was a lengthy discussion about that on Ten Forward. I don't know about that template, but I plan to put this one to use if we can get a consensus here. -- Cid Highwind 11:29, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC) -- Cid Highwind 11:29, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC) :RE:Standarization: Unfortunately, not every ship/person/class/ect has the same information available to use the sidebars the most efficient way possible-- esp. in the case of starship classes. -Alan del Beccio 11:46, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC) Just a small clarification: of course, this sidebar doesn't need to be used on every single starship article - but if a sidebar is already in use, it might as well be a standardized one. There are some entries in sidebars which I think just don't belong: for example, USS Voyager has "cruising" and "maximum speed" (which probably belongs on the class article if standard, in the main text if related to specific changes to the ship, and removed if it is from invalid resources), "crew complement" (which changes and should be mentioned in the main text instead). Generally speaking, this template could be used whenever we have an image of the ship (in that case, we know the vessels' class). The affiliation is a given anyway, the status, too (ship status is always related to a specific moment in time - this date should be noted with the status). The only possible unknown is the registry, and I think we can live with one entry being unknown? -- Cid Highwind 14:17, 18 Dec 2005 (UTC) We just had another case of unreferenced, probably non-canon, information being added to a starship sidebar. As partly stated above, sidebars have the problem of not being cited in most cases, and used to simply dump all kinds of information that might better be placed in the article text. Is there anything else to be added to a generic sidebar - if there is, please discuss here. Otherwise, I'll be updating this template over the weekend and replacing some existing sidebars with it for further discussion. -- Cid Highwind 22:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC) I now added this template to three starship articles as a test: *USS Voyager, a "hero" starship with an extensive previous sidebar, with at least some of the previous information in need of citation. *Columbia, had a medium-sized sidebar before, everything else as above *USS Valley Forge, a random "starship-of-the-week", that didn't have a sidebar before. Any comments after looking at these? -- Cid Highwind 15:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC) :I plugged this template into SS Vico, USS Sutherland, USS Shenandoah and USS Yangtzee Kiang. The template provides essential, "at-a-glance" information and moves the detail into the body of the article. The four ships were chosen because each had an image of the vessel on the page. Question: as many ships never appeared on-screen, should the template be used for those pages? (I think "yes"). If so, would a generic class picture be in order, or simply no image. --GNDN 16:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC) ::If we use those templates on pages for ships not "seen", we should not put a generic image of the class. All of those images are of specific ships, and people will think it is a picture of that ship and/or we will open up the can of worms of using images everywhere that aren't what they say they are. Bad can, no cookie for that can. --OuroborosCobra talk 16:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC) I added the template to USS Bellerophon (NCC-74705). There don't seem to be any immediate complaints, so I guess it is safe to slowly start using the template where appropriate. Don't rush things, though, by adding it everywhere at once, and please make sure to only use it if we really know all the facts. I already found some starship pages earlier where the only source for registry and/or class was the Encyclopedia. Don't use the template there. Regarding the question above, I think we should avoid using the template for "unseen" starships at the moment - most of the time, if we haven't seen the ship, most of the details are guesswork, too. -- Cid Highwind 20:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)